Someone told me that
love ended, and yes, I believe that, because I was in love with a boy until he cut off his curls, and I was in love with a girl when I was little; I loved her until she wouldn't share her dolls with me and she would push me on the floor and rip at the skin on my back with her fingernails. I stopped going over to her house and she started sitting in the
pine trees in the front yard. I got a letter from her, maybe six years ago, written on
Strawberry Shortcake stationary that I never replied to.
Anyway.
Someone told me that love ends, and yes, God, I believe that sometimes, because I was in love with a boy until he cut off his curls and grew a beard, and I was in love with a boy until he shaved off his beard and started to grow his hair. Last winter I had a crush on a boy named Andy who bought me a forty, and I told him that he could have a little bit of my heart curved in the loop of my phone number if he wanted, but I was drunk by that time on cheap formaldehyde and never got around to giving him an inaccurate set of seven. I think he said I gave myself away too casually since all he'd done was buy me beer. And I never saw him again after we let him out of the rusted car and I went to my friend's couch and tried not to hear them having sex.
Someone told me love ends, and I'm wishing that were true now, because I hate this choking in my lungs, I hate this mucus that is always filling my throat. I hate these sideways words that I'm trying to turn so you won't recognize yourself. Fuck, you know? If I actually breathed out when I was in your vicinity, the shrieking that came from my septum would shatter the glass on your lips. Yes, I was cut into by you, and I'm suspecting now that you're just another heroin addict and that you've brushed it into the cuts on my fingertips.
I like my one-night-crushes, set against backdrops of chain smoking and bad punk bands, because they're the easiest to forget; unfortunately with you there was never any sort of backdrop, no defining marks. The time stretched on like highway fifty through Nevada and my fucking chatter was just the strip club at the side of the road. It's not easy to forget when there is nothing but the person that makes it memorable. Someone told me that love ends, and I said yes, I know, because you're justifying yourself to me.
Today a ladybug landed on my breast when I sat in front of a hotel, smoking--I'm almost up to a pack a day--and I let it carve textile loops into the fabric of my shirt, and I watched it crawl down my sleeve & settle around the cat teeth scars on my left wrist. I remember the gush towards my thumb and how I could almost see the bone; how much I cried because I was only five. I bit that girl, near the elbow, on her birthday--I don't remember why. But I loved seeing the red half-circles my mouth had left.